The name Wednesday continues
Middle English Wednesdei.
Old English had
wōdnesdæg (“Woden’s day”), which would be expected to continue as
Wodnesday.
Old Frisian also attests a form
wednesdei. By the Middle English period, the spelling
Wednesday developed through analogical and orthographic changes rather than direct phonological inheritance. The name is a
calque of the Latin 'day of
Mercury', reflecting the fact that the Germanic god
Woden (Wodanaz or Odin) during the
Roman era was
interpreted as "Germanic Mercury". The Latin name dates to the late 2nd or early 3rd century. It is a calque of Greek (), a term first attested, together with the system of naming the seven weekdays after the seven classical planets, in the
Anthologiarum by
Vettius Valens (c. AD 170). The Latin name is reflected directly in the weekday name in most modern
Romance languages: (Sardinian), (French), (Italian), (Spanish), (Romanian), (Catalan), or (Corsican), (Venetian). In Welsh it is , meaning 'Mercury's Day'. The
Dutch name for the day, , has the same etymology as English
Wednesday; it comes from
Middle Dutch , ('Wodan's day'). The
German name for the day, (literally: 'mid-week'), replaced the former name ('Wodan's day') in the 10th century. Similarly, the
Yiddish word for Wednesday is (), meaning and sounding a lot like the
German word it came from. Most
Slavic languages follow this pattern and use derivations of 'the middle' (
Belarusian ,
Bulgarian ,
Croatian ,
Czech ,
Macedonian ,
Polish ,
Russian ,
Serbian or ,
Slovak ,
Slovene ,
Ukrainian ). The
Finnish name is ('middle of the week'), as is the
Icelandic name: , and the
Faroese name: ('mid-week day'). Some dialects of Faroese have , though, which shares etymology with Wednesday.
Danish,
Norwegian,
Swedish , ( meaning 'Odin's day'). In
Japanese, the word for Wednesday is meaning 'water day' and is associated with (): Mercury (the planet), literally meaning 'water star'. Similarly, in
Korean the word for Wednesday is , also meaning 'water day'. In most of the
languages of India, the word for Wednesday is — meaning 'day' and
Budha being the planet
Mercury. In
Armenian ( ),
Georgian ( ),
Turkish (), and
Tajik () languages the word literally means 'four (days) from Saturday' originating from
Persian ( ).
Portuguese uses the word , meaning 'fourth day', while in
Greek the word is () meaning simply 'fourth'. Similarly,
Arabic means 'fourth',
Hebrew means 'fourth', and
Persian means 'fourth day'. Yet the name for the day in
Estonian ,
Lithuanian , and
Latvian means 'third day' while in
Mandarin Chinese (), means 'day three', as Sunday is unnumbered. ==Religious observances==